


Never Replace You

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life, Part 3 [14]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13758936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: How in the world do you replace either one of them ...





	Never Replace You

“No. I’m just going to quit. It’ll be easier. What did you say I should become again? Cooker of books for your dessert shop?” Throwing himself down on the couch, he bounced up again, hand gripping his hair, yanking several times, pacing twice around the table before coming to a stop by the window, “seriously? How much math does a bookkeeper really need to do these days? There’re computer programs and calculators and sharp pencils. The accounting practically does itself.”

Scully wanted to throw a few of those sharpened pencils at him but she refrained, “would you sit back down, please?! You’re annoying the hell out of me and I’m already hungry. Just … sit … and be quiet.”

He did not comply, wandering the room instead, “we’ve read through every one of these backgrounds twice already and each one is worse than the last. I give up. They’re all terrible and dangerous and from what I can tell, not open to even the remotest of extreme possibilities.”

“Neither was I, Mulder, and look how well I turned out.”

“You have never once agreed with one word that’s come out of my mouth regarding anything in seven years. I haven’t convinced you of a damn thing.”

“But you’re still alive.”

He had absolutely no response to this and having the sneaking suspicion he may have somehow lost his argument surrounded by hypnotic voice and reverse psychology, he finally sat down, elbows to knees, “can’t I just deputize the Gunmen as one entity, have them dress all in black so they’re interchangeable and do some funky poaching in the dark of night with you monitoring the camera I have attached to my head? Is that so much to ask?”

“And what would their name be?”

“I don’t know … Frolangers, maybe?”

Scully really was going to hit him, “neither of us is good at diplomacy on an empty stomach. Do you know if we have anything for dinner?”

“Not a clue. We were arguing too much yesterday to remember to shop; I think we ordered from the diner.

“I want pancakes … and bacon. Lots of bacon.”

Knowing this evening would be shot to hell if he didn’t get some food in both of them, he moved again, wandering to the pantry and digging in, “we have pancake mix,” moving to the freezer, “and while we do not have any bacon, we have a crap-ton of sausage, what the hell, was it on sale or something, and a bag of chicken nuggets.”

Scully was beside him in a heartbeat, stomach angry, cravings real, “where do we keep chocolate chips?”

“Do we own chocolate chips?”

“No self-respecting Scully goes without at least one bag of them in the house.” Unearthing from a lower cupboard, she held them aloft, “chocolate chip pancakes it is. Find me a frying pan, please; if I don’t eat in five minutes, I’m going to pour the chocolate directly down my throat.”

She was scary.

It amused him.

Soon, pancakes were being doused in syrup and coated with a thick layer of butter, soggy as an eight-hour rain day with maple-y goodness. Scully, carrying her plateful and another bowl of sausages to the couch, settled in, eyeing Mulder’s plate as he devoured his first bite mid-route to his spot beside her, “you going to share at all?”

“Eyes on your own plate, Agent.”

“You have one more pancake than I do.”

His grin came on so suddenly that the sausage piece he’d just bitten off rolled from his mouth back onto the plate, “let’s negotiate at the end and I might be persuaded to give you a bite or two.”

“I’ll trade you some dessert for it.”

She was smiling all the while and he stopped mid-pancake cut, “we have dessert?”

And the smile shifted to mischievous in an instant, “you’ll like it.”

He gave her the extra immediately.

He was not disappointed by the five minutes of grinding followed by the 10 of straddling sex with files scattered and syrupy-chocolate kisses abounding. As she lay against him, putty in his hands, malleable and soft, exhausted and spent, he whispered in her ear, voice low, “I can never replace you.”

Snuggling deeper into his chest, she managed to find the words to tell him, “you have to because I can never replace you.”

Pulling one of the myriad of blankets heaped around the room over them both, “we will find someone tonight, I promise.”

&&&&&&&&&&

2am rolled up after another 20-minute turned hour 15 power nap and Scully looked at him with rimmed eyes, dark and exhausted, “there is not one person in here with even the remotest possibility of doing what we do.”

Hating to admit defeat, especially when he knew how much she had wanted to find at least one person in the pile, “we can go through them again, I mean, maybe something will jump out that we haven’t seen the last four times.”

She dropped her head back to the arm of the couch, feet wiggling until they were under his warm and cozy butt cheek, “that would just give me more of a headache and besides, if I didn’t like them the first time around, the fifth won’t suddenly, magically endear them to me, either.”

“Then we need to call Betsy, ask her to use her powers for good instead of evil and have her persuade Uncle Skimmer that he’ll have to be my partner until further notice but right now, we need to go to sleep.” Standing from their paper-whirled cocoon, he gathered bowls, stray dishtowels, candy wrappers and mugs, “because I need you and a bed and the feel of warm body and fuzzy flannel.”

Deciding defeat wasn’t so bad after all, she rolled off the couch, standing and swaying, “I can do that.”

He moved her down the hall, hands on hips, steering to clear a stack of shoes and a pesky doorframe, “What will we call it?”

“What?”

“Our donut shop? I was thinking ‘So Good You Could Donuts’.” A solitary chuckle told him he’d done good, “or maybe ‘Go Nuts Donuts’.”

“Just get in bed.” Finally settled, half-snoozed, half-mind-racing, “Donutty?”

“You realize that sooner or later, that will have to happen, yes?”

“G’night, Mulder.”

“G’Donut, Scully.”

&&&&&&&&&&

The following morning, after meeting Maggie at church and taking her out to breakfast, the pair of them yawned their way through coffee until Skinner showed up, having been called out for some other agent’s issue. Coming into the kitchen, he stopped when he saw them, “did I lose four hours from the front door to here?”

Maggie stood, kissing his cheek, “no. Dana and Fox came to church and took me to breakfast and now I’m trying to keep them awake long enough to finish their coffee before I send them for a nap.”

Skinner eyed the file carton innocently shoved in the corner of the kitchen, “up all night with those?”

Mulder nodded, “yeah. I’ve been through that stack so many times I can recite each file by memory.”

As he collected his own coffee and sat down, “find any?”

“No and therein lies the problem.”

Turning his judging eyebrow from Mulder to Scully, “you couldn’t talk him into any of them?”

“It was me, Walter. Mulder wanted to go through again and I just …” giving him an embarrassed look, “I don’t see myself trusting any of them.”

Skinner looked at Mulder, only half-joking, “what the hell have you done to her?”

Mulder decided to take the humor side and respond in kind, “do you really want to know?” That killed any type of serious mood as Maggie blushed, Scully blushed, Skinner blushed and Mulder continued, “anyway, we figured maybe you could look through them, tell us if you have any more info that might change our minds?”

He didn’t get up, instead leaning back in the chair, glasses removed for a moment or two to rub his eyes, “can you give me half-hour for a shower? I’ve been in Arlington most of the night with a rookie who shot his partner and is now backpedaling his story.”

Both nodded and once Skinner stood up, Mulder spoke, “I always forget you have other agents to deal with besides us. This guy hasn’t knocked us off the top of your ‘pain in the ass’ scale, has he?”

“Oh, no, Mulder. You two are too far up on that list for any mortal to reach.”

Once he was gone, Scully looked at her mother, “is he officially moved in here yet?”

“No sugar coating today, I see.”

Grinning at her mom over her edge of her mug, “just curious if I should start knocking on all closed doors from now on.”

“Yes, dear, please do.”

&&&&&&&&

They spread out the files in the living room until people began showing up and once everyone left again, the files came back out. By 10pm, Mulder had a headache the size of the Washington Monument, its pointy little end jabbing behind his eye, “I’ll work alone. I’ll just avoid cases where I have to travel and the ones around here will be background checks and witness follow-ups; hell, I’ll do other peoples background checks and witness follow-ups. It’s fine.”

Scully’s hand, already on his thigh, tightened its grip, “you will hate your job in under three days.”

“But I’ll love my kid and you forever so it’s not that difficult of a choice in the end.”

Skinner took one last shot, hoping to break one of them, “will you just talk to this Doggett guy? I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew him in the Marines and he’s got an excellent history.”

Mulder nearly caved but Scully spoke first, “and he’s got a rec letter from his friend in the DoD. He was a no even before we began this insanity.”

Skinner flopped back on the couch, hating them both … Mulder flopped back on the carpet, hating the world … Scully sat their quietly, eyeing her mother reading her book, “what do you think, Mom?”

Placing her finger in the pages, carefully closing the book but keeping her spot, signaling this would not be a long conversation, “I think that only you two can judge who you work with but if Fox needs a partner in order to keep you out of the field, I would like to vote that Walter goes on out of town assignments when you have them but for local work, keep it to your self-defined mundane nightmare of non-threatening inquires.”

She re-opened her book.

She did not look at Walter.

Walter, sitting there, felt his finely-honed decision-making skills caving to the reality of his personal life and looking from the man who irritated him to the ends of the Earth to the woman who was carrying the grandchild of the woman he felt certain he would eventually marry or at least live with for the next 70 years, realized that he had people he had to watch out for. Also realizing as well that this might only mean one or two trips out a month, he justified by labeling it field reacquaintance and skill improvement, “two out of town cases a month at most, understand?”

Scully stood, turned, wiggled herself in between her mother and Skinner, hugged him as awkwardly as possible from the side, “thank you, Walter.”

“You don’t have to hug me, Scully.”

“Is it making you uncomfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Another 10 seconds, then I’ll leave you be.”

When she finally let go, he discovered he kind of missed her.


End file.
